“If You Fall Down, You Get Back Up”: Creating a Space for Testimony and Witnessing by Urban Indigenous Women and Girls

Abstract

Historical trauma and the negative effects of colonialism continue to be played out within Canadian culture. These processes have a deleterious effect on physical and psychological health outcomes among Indigenous Peoples. Through the creation of a safe space as part of a decolonizing, participatory activity program spanning 7 weeks, First Nations and Metis women and girls (aged 8-12) were able to begin to unpack what it means to be happy, healthy, and safe, and what is needed to actualize these goals. A community engaged, asset-based workshop approach provided a forum for participants to discuss the impact of traumatic experiences on the ability of adults to model a positive image of strength, independence, and confidence for their daughters, while creating a space to discuss change.

Mental Health Interventions for First Nation, Inuit, and Métis Peoples in Canada: A Systematic Review

“…A promising finding of this study was that 6 out of the 14 studies were for young people (Cooper & Driedger, 2019;Crooks et al, 2017;DeWit et al, 2017;Fox et al, 1984;Harder et al, 2015;Miller et al, 2011). This is a positive result as recent household surveys of Indigenous people highlighted that young Indigenous people are at significantly higher risk of suicide compared to non-Indigenous young people (First Nations Information Governance Centre, 2018; Kumar & Tjepkema, 2019).…”

“…Overall, 14 studies were included (Table 1). Eight were quantitative (DeWit et al, 2017;Fox et al, 1984;Hardt, 2012;Miller et al, 2011;Ritchie et al, 2014;Thomas et al, 2013;Tu et al, 2019;Varcoe et al, 2017), two were qualitative (Cooper & Driedger, 2019;Hadjipavlou et al, 2018), and four were mixed method studies (Crooks et al, 2017;Gross et al, 2016;Harder et al, 2015;Varcoe et al, 2019). In total, 11 were cross-sectional studies that compared before versus after an intervention (Crooks et al, 2017;DeWit et al, 2017;Fox et al, 1984;Gross et al, 2016;Harder et al, 2015;Hardt, 2012;Miller et al, 2011;Ritchie et al, 2014;Thomas et al, 2013;Varcoe et al, 2017Varcoe et al, , 2019, one was a prospective cohort study (Tu et al, 2019), four conducted one-on-one interviews (Crooks et al, 2017;Hadjipavlou et al, 2018;Harder et al, 2015;Varcoe et al, 2019), one conducted focus groups (Gross et al, 2016), and one used snowball sampling methods to recruit the participants (Hadjipavlou et al, 2018).…”

“…Providing incentives may have influenced participants' decision to participate. One study aimed to recruit people who identified as Métis so they could build a specific intervention for Métis peoples and avoid pan-Indigenous results in their study (Cooper & Driedger, 2019). However, the community wanted this study to expand the inclusion criteria to include Métis and First Nations peoples because some young people in the study highlighted that they had one parent who identified as Métis and the other parent who identified as First Nations (Cooper & Driedger, 2019).…”

Building on Strengths: Collaborative Intergenerational Health Research with Urban First Nations and Métis Women and Girls

“…Initially, this proved challenging for many participants. Creating a research space where people were encouraged to voice their opinions was essential (Cooper & Driedger, 2019). This space provided a venue for shared learning.…”

Creative Strengths-Based Approaches to Health Promotion: Perspectives From Graduate Training Experiences

“…We both knew that the world is not a perfect place when we began our graduate training. We knew that within Canada children get hurt by the people who are supposed to love them (Cooper & Driedger, 2019), adults die of treatable infections because they cannot access health care, and many people live and work in unsafe conditions (Raphael, 2016). Yet the realities of some of the stories we heard and information we learned were profoundly shocking.…”